miss diminutive:Pangea: At this point I just presume all cops are bad and won't even look at one. Except when I feel like that makes me suspicious, and I look at them briefly. Plus I'll never lie to a friend, but I have no guilt associated with lying to cops either. I don't even recognize them as humans anymore.

I'm not at that point yet. I know eleven cops personally to varying degrees (my old job on a university campus had me interacting with them regularly) and four of them were just decent guys who treated people well and with respect, took pride in their work and at least tried to see where people were coming from. The other seven were raging assholes who treated their badge like a free pass to harass, intimidate and humiliate people legally.

I was using a little hyperbole, and actually get pretty good results from police. Fortunately for me I also am white and at least a little personable at times.

7 bad apples out of 11 is a pretty surprising and disappointing anecdote though.

Headso:Pangea: kindms: Headso: This is another thread where one can find an explanation for our roid raging paramilitary police force and high incarceration rates, as you can see by half the posts in this thread Americans are fine with the police beating the shiat out of an entire family because someone dropped a cigarette butt on the ground.

The President of The United States of America is debating whether to assassinate ANOTHER citizen without charging them with crimes or affording them due process GUARANTEED in the US Constitution and no one gives a shiat. So cops beating on people is not even going to register with most people. This thread is a perfect example. Lots of GOOD and I'm OK With This just because the headline describes person or people that folks have been trained it is OK to hate. Sound familiar ?

Your false equivalency is bad and you should feel bad.

that's for sure, there's even a thread about that very topic on the politics tab at this very moment if he wants to discuss that subject.

how is it false equivalency ? People OK with state power beating up people for minor infractions = people ok with state sanctioned assassinations of uncharged citizens. It speaks to the mentality of those who cheer on force as long as they are not the ones in the crosshairs.

I know we all hate the cops and that all cops are true power hungry scumbags who deserve instant death because of the profession they chose. . . but are we really around 100 posts in the thread without anyone even questioning these events? In all situations you have two sides and then the truth. We have one side of this story and an incomplete side at that. Dad drops things all the time, yet he smokes. Wow, what a wonderful combination. No chance of anything wrong going on there.

I'm sure the neighbor knocking "calmly" expressed to the son that the father was being ticketed. The son then went out and had a calm, quiet talk with the police. He probably said something like "Excuse me officer, can we please resolve this another way, I'll pick up the ciggy" and not "How dare you ticket my father you racist MF," I'm sure there were no gestures that could have appeared aggressive in his stance. And of course, the officers have history and know if they are dealing with a convicted murdered or a college grad with no criminal record. Then mom comes out and escalates the situation further.

Cmon people, we are better than this. You aren't guilty because you are black and you aren't guilty because you are a cop. The facts in this story by the family do not add up. That doesn't mean the cop was correct in what he did. You do an investigation, look at the officers history and piece together what actually happened. Don't take the above paragraph as a defense of the cop. He might be a complete scumbag. You just aren't going to convince me of that by having one side of the story that makes the family look like heavenly angels and the cops look like demons rising up from the underworld. The truth is likely going to be a lot closer to the middle.

I know we all hate the cops and that all cops are true power hungry scumbags who deserve instant death because of the profession they chose. . . but are we really around 100 posts in the thread without anyone even questioning these events? In all situations you have two sides and then the truth. We have one side of this story and an incomplete side at that. Dad drops things all the time, yet he smokes. Wow, what a wonderful combination. No chance of anything wrong going on there.

I'm sure the neighbor knocking "calmly" expressed to the son that the father was being ticketed. The son then went out and had a calm, quiet talk with the police. He probably said something like "Excuse me officer, can we please resolve this another way, I'll pick up the ciggy" and not "How dare you ticket my father you racist MF," I'm sure there were no gestures that could have appeared aggressive in his stance. And of course, the officers have history and know if they are dealing with a convicted murdered or a college grad with no criminal record. Then mom comes out and escalates the situation further.

Cmon people, we are better than this. You aren't guilty because you are black and you aren't guilty because you are a cop. The facts in this story by the family do not add up. That doesn't mean the cop was correct in what he did. You do an investigation, look at the officers history and piece together what actually happened. Don't take the above paragraph as a defense of the cop. He might be a complete scumbag. You just aren't going to convince me of that by having one side of the story that makes the family look like heavenly angels and the cops look like demons rising up from the underworld. The truth is likely going to be a lot closer to the middle.

I can tell by your earnestness you so WANT this to be true. Awww, being naive (or is it willfully ignorant?) is so cute!

Pangea:At this point I just presume all cops are bad and won't even look at one. Except when I feel like that makes me suspicious, and I look at them briefly. Plus I'll never lie to a friend, but I have no guilt associated with lying to cops either. I don't even recognize them as humans anymore

It's best not to talk to them at all. Their mission is to jail as many citizens as possible, after beating them to a pulp.

Johnson's mother came outside as Johnson began to walk away, until the other deputy, named in the complaint as "Deputy Russell," allegedly grabbed Johnson from behind and tried to slam him against the patrol car and into a concrete post, the complaint states.

I imagine this is the problem: you don't just walk away from cops if they aren't done with you, but there's not a lot of information to go on here. It's entirely possible that the kid escalated this situation by his own actions. Without video we'll never really know, IMHO, and he should have his day in court.

The whole Russian "video everything in your car" phenomenon needs to be everywhere, really. If we all wore cameras and had a record of the stuff that happened to/near us, a lot of these issues would either go away or be more easily resolved.

The problem wasn't the cigarettes. The problem was not complying. When a cop tells you to do something you do it PERIOD. It doesn't matter if his commands were logical, legal or even make sense ... you just do it!!!

This guy wanted to go pick up his dad's dropped cigarette the cop wants to ticket him also. When he decided to go ahead and pick up the cigarette anyway that was a clear rebelling against the officer's orders!

Nothing will make a cop go from calm to extreme rage faster than a civilian ignoring or even questioning his orders!! NOTHING!No wonder the cop tackle him, headlocked and his partner tasered his balls!!

Right or wrong the truth is they have guns and you don't so you will always lose! Might as well just comply and eat humble pie.

I know we all hate the cops and that all cops are true power hungry scumbags who deserve instant death because of the profession they chose. . . but are we really around 100 posts in the thread without anyone even questioning these events? In all situations you have two sides and then the truth. We have one side of this story and an incomplete side at that. Dad drops things all the time, yet he smokes. Wow, what a wonderful combination. No chance of anything wrong going on there.

Presumably that's why he was DOING IT OUTSIDE.

I'm sure the neighbor knocking "calmly" expressed to the son that the father was being ticketed. The son then went out and had a calm, quiet talk with the police. He probably said something like "Excuse me officer, can we please resolve this another way, I'll pick up the ciggy" and not "How dare you ticket my father you racist MF," I'm sure there were no gestures that could have appeared aggressive in his stance. And of course, the officers have history and know if they are dealing with a convicted murdered or a college grad with no criminal record. Then mom comes out and escalates the situation further.

Cmon people, we are better than this. You aren't guilty because you are black and you aren't guilty because you are a cop. The facts in this story by the family do not add up. That doesn't mean the cop was correct in what he did. You do an investigation, look at the officers history and piece together what actually happened. Don't take the above paragraph as a defense of the cop. He might be a complete scumbag. You just aren't going to convince me of that by having one side of the story that makes the family look like heavenly angels and the cops look like demons rising up from the underworld. The truth is likely going to be a lot closer to the middle.

From the above, I expect that you, like myself, would favor putting tamper-proof recording devices on officers and requiring them to activate them for all citizen interactions. That would go a long way to eliminating these sorts of back and forth charges with no supporting evidence either way. Even with that, I don't think it would eliminate the problem completely. The cops routinely get cleared on acts that, had they been committed by a citizen, would have resulted in arrest and prosecution, the panic-stricken shooting-up of the two trucks by the cops during the Christopher Dorner episode, for one recent example.

SuperNinjaToad:The problem wasn't the cigarettes. The problem was not complying. When a cop tells you to do something you do it PERIOD. It doesn't matter if his commands were logical, legal or even make sense ... you just do it!!!

This guy wanted to go pick up his dad's dropped cigarette the cop wants to ticket him also. When he decided to go ahead and pick up the cigarette anyway that was a clear rebelling against the officer's orders!

Nothing will make a cop go from calm to extreme rage faster than a civilian ignoring or even questioning his orders!! NOTHING!No wonder the cop tackle him, headlocked and his partner tasered his balls!!

Right or wrong the truth is they have guns and you don't so you will always lose! Might as well just comply and eat humble pie.

Yeah, well, always have one obvious throw-away recording device - then, when one has finally been discharged from the hospital and everyone from the cop on the beat to the DA has painted your portrait à la grade school Goya - post up the contents from the other cameras... Always be exceedingly polite & speak clearly and succinctly (from the time one takes the first jolt until after one cashes the final settlement check).

SuperNinjaToad:The problem wasn't the cigarettes. The problem was not complying. When a cop tells you to do something you do it PERIOD. It doesn't matter if his commands were logical, legal or even make sense ... you just do it!!!

This guy wanted to go pick up his dad's dropped cigarette the cop wants to ticket him also. When he decided to go ahead and pick up the cigarette anyway that was a clear rebelling against the officer's orders!

Nothing will make a cop go from calm to extreme rage faster than a civilian ignoring or even questioning his orders!! NOTHING!No wonder the cop tackle him, headlocked and his partner tasered his balls!!

Right or wrong the truth is they have guns and you don't so you will always lose! Might as well just comply and eat humble pie.

I'm not sure if it's the exclamation points, but these sentences are hilariously awesome to me.

My town just announced the police want to start using Google Glass to help identify people on the street. The lines are really getting blurry here.

See I'd be fine with this as long as the GG were mandated to record at all times the officer is on duty. Then, the whole "we identified the suspect and he was resisting, but have no video" mantra may not hold up as well, hopefully..right?